Scottish Social Services Set to Take Fat Children from Parents

So I wake up this morning to an e-mail from long-time Shapeling Buffpuff, with a link to this story. Scottish Social Services have threatened to remove six children, ages 21 months to 12, from their parents’ home, unless the kids lose weight within three months. To “safeguard their welfare.”

‘Cause, you know, nothing says “safeguarding welfare” like taking children out of a loving home.

Buffpuff on the U.K. media response:

Needless to say I woke up this morning to a tirade of holier than thou anti-fat rhetoric radio presenters and listeners alike. All the clichés were present from donut-scarfing to emotional eating to “where’s-their-sense-of-personal-responsibility?!”

The Mirror helpfullyoffers a taste of that with a point-counterpoint feature about whether this is a good idea or not. Representing the “Great idea!” camp is Tam Fry, Chairman of the Child Growth Foundation, who I can only assume is the U.K.’s answer to MeMe Roth.

In 99 per cent of cases, obesity is so avoidable. Letting a child get so fat is a form of abuse as there’s a possibility they could die before their parents.

It’s important they are taken out of their homes and put under 24-hour surveillance from doctors and nurses.

We have no hesitation in removing a severely undernourished child from their home. We should be as concerned when they are seriously overweight.

The blame is not always entirely the parents. In this case, where were the health professionals to intervene early?

Going into care is a last resort. But if your kid is obese, do something. Apart from the name-calling they will suffer, do you want a death on your hands?

Where to begin?

It’s “so avoidable” in 99% of cases? Um, [CITATION NEEDED.]

Fat children could die before their parents? Well, yeah, so could anybody. But the people who screech about how THE OBESITY EPIDEMIC BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA will inevitably result in a generation of parents outliving their children still have no goddamned answer when you point out that life expectancy continues to increase. And it did so while obesity rates were rising (which, psst, they aren’t anymore, at least in the U.S.). Not to mention, both of the parents in question here are fat; if you believe obesity is deadly, how the hell do you figure it’s going to kill their kids before them?

And “letting” your children get fat — as if it’s something all parents can easily control — is “child abuse” tantamount to starving them? They should be under 24-hour surveillance? People can seriously say this shit with a straight face?

Speaking of which, what happens when parents are forced to “do something” about their fat kids (since we all know the thought would never have occurred to them before Social Services stepped in)? Well, when one of those kids is an 11-year-old girl threatened with losing her parents unless she loses weight, take a wild fucking guess.

[The mother] fears the girl, 11, may develop an eating disorder as she now shuns proper meals…

Way to safeguard those kids’ welfare, there, folks. A girl who’s too terrorized to eat is way better off than a fat girl. Keep up the good work, you despicable assholes.

Oh, and hey, let’s not forget this part:

The Dundee family came to the attention of social services when they asked for help in caring for the kids, including the girl, three, who has developmental problems.

Let that be a lesson to you, parents: Don’t ever ask for the help you need with your kids. Jesus.

At 12, I started having fainting spells. A full battery of tests followed, and when nothing turned up, the “obvious” became the default – I was too fat. So I was forced to meet with a nutritionist once a week, who went over my daily food logs (what fun!) and exercise logs (even more fun!) and tried desperately to figure out why I hadn’t lost more than 10 or so pounds.

I think of those days, affectionately, as hell. They truly are the very worst days of my life – at a time when people were supposed to be building me up (because we all know how emotionally fragile adolescents are), they were tearing me down.

When I read the line about putting an eleven year old under 24 hour surveillance to make her lose weight… I started tearing up. I know how ineffective this plan will be at having someone lose weight in the long term – but I absolutely know how *effective* it will be at screwing someone up mentally in the very, very long term.

When I read the line about putting an eleven year old under 24 hour surveillance to make her lose weight… I started tearing up. I know how ineffective this plan will be at having someone lose weight in the long term – but I absolutely know how *effective* it will be at screwing someone up mentally in the very, very long term.

But she’ll probably commit suicide. One less fatty in the world. They win.

The “obesity is avoidable in 99% of cases” is a great strawman. It is so persistent because it is completely true. Actually, obesity is avoidable in 100% of cases because if you don’t eat, you won’t be obese.

The argument should be shifted to nutrition. That way when someone brings up the inevitable concentration camp analogy, we can cheerfully agree that obesity can always be “cured”, but at the greater cost of sacrificing health.

What’s sad is that these kids will probably be starved, they’ll lose weight, and everyone will conclude that the parents were negligent assholes to begin with and that proper diet and exercise can fix everything.

The Mirror article linked to shows that even the “good” guys are very focussed on seeing fat as a problem – they “show both sides of the story” but they’re both the same fucking side, except that one does advocate taking children away from their loving parents and the other doesn’t.

OK, we’ll keep kids in homes where parents extinguish cigarettes on the kids’ arms, or beat them senseless, or completely ignore them and leave them to fend for themselves, and put all our efforts into taking fat kids away form their loving parents.
Yeah, that makes sense!

Does this paragraph seem to have wandered in from another article and forgotten how to get back?

“Jane Crook, 39, lost nine stone by giving up fruit after discovering that, owing to a rare ailment, it made her fat. Jane, of Clutton, Somerset, shed weight before IVF treatment and is now a mum-to-be.”

Uh, okay. So I guess Jane’s being held up as a shining example of successful parenting (never mind that she’s not actually a parent yet)–as opposed to those wildly irresponsible fat parents who are probably STUFFING THEIR FACES with bananas and strawberries all day long.

Also. Giving up fruit? I can’t even tell you how much I would definitely rather be fat.

Yeah, Linz, I couldn’t figure out where that came from either… I feel like maybe it was a sidebar that ended up in the middle of the article when it was put online? Truly baffling.

It would make a little more sense if they followed the train of thought and finished it: “THEREFORE IT IS POSSIBLE TO BE FAT EVEN IF YOU ARE EATING PLENTY OF FRUIT AND NO DONUTS.” Not that we needed the story of a rare food allergy to let us know that maybe these kids aren’t being abused with nutrition, but those who are less familiar with the literature might need the help.

The thing that stood out for me when I read this, is that the mother says she doesn’t even own a deep fat fryer, all their meals are home-made (no OMG FAST FOOD), and no “junk” food in the house. So what the hell is she doing wrong? Is she strapping the kids into chairs and force-feeding them massive amounts of food at every meal she cooks? I really doubt they can afford to do that with 6 kids.
No one in authority wants to admit that there isn’t a whole hell of a lot to be done to ensure safe, permanent weight loss, but OMG TEH FATZ is going to so totally kill you early (no matter that most of your family was fat and lived a long damned time, TEH FATZ KILLZ, “everyone knows” that). They have the power, they think fat is ugly and deadly (whether they say ugly or not, you know that’s what they’re thinking), so they’re damned well going to enforce their views on you and your kids and who gives a rat’s ass about your mental health? It’s not your mental health that matters, it’s your physical body that they can’t stand if you’re fat, so you’re going to conform, if they have to put you in a concentration camp (hospital with 24/7 observation, same difference) to make sure you conform to their aesthetic. What a crock of total asshat shit. I can’t think of enough expletives to cover that kind of willful ignorance.

This kind of thing is so scary that I almost don’t even want to think about it. I can only hope that FA influence on mainstream thinking will move quicker than these Big Brother-style scenarios and they won’t end up coming to pass. But short of that I don’t even know what I can do. 99.99% of people are so convinced that the “science” is on their side that you could not possibly tell them with any perceived credibility that the “childhood obesity is entirely preventable” myth isn’t gospel truth.

seriously, thanks for pointing that out, FillyJonk, that “Jane Crook” had a FOOD ALLERGY, not amazing willpower that allowed her to shed the dreaded F A T (clearly, willpower that we’re all lacking which is why we’re still omgfat). This is precisely what that little asterisk means with the following “results not typical” at the bottom of the screen/bottle/print ad/exercise equipment etc.
Yet, she’s heralded as a success story. Because of course it wasn’t the food allergy that may have prohibited her from getting pregnant, but the fat. eye roll….

“It’s not your mental health that matters, it’s your physical body that they can’t stand if you’re fat, so you’re going to conform, if they have to put you in a concentration camp (hospital with 24/7 observation, same difference) to make sure you conform to their aesthetic.”

Dude, so not cool. I understand what you’re saying, because this is a totally horrible story. But a very different kind of horrible from genocide, ouch.

Totally right. A hospital with 24/7 observation is not particularly far-fetched in this case and would be a miserable and traumatic experience for a child, but calling it a “concentration camp” is letting your rhetoric run away with you.

Taking children away from caring parents just because they happen to be fat is the REAL child abuse.

Social services should be ashamed of wasting time on this when they should be focusing on helping children who are truly abused, beaten, shamed, starved, ridiculed and neglected by their caregivers every day. Those are the children who really need “24 hour care”.

“Let that be a lesson to you, parents: Don’t ever ask for the help you need with your kids. Jesus.”

Seriously, the government does not want to help you. Once, on a driver’s licence renewal, I wrote that I take anti-depressants. Every damn year since, I have had to find my dr. on my b-day and have him fill out a form that literally says that I will not kill someone with my car because I take the lowest possible dose of my meds. Now,I just lie and say I don’t take anything.

Not to detract from the topic but I find that many people who run bureaucracies (not just gov’t) don’t really want to help you. Health care bureaucracies seem particularly susceptible. Whenever I fill out those health history forms at the doctor as instructed (they are always totally ridiculous with their “do you now have or have you ever had…” anything from cancer to a headache–do you really want to know if I have “ever had” a cough? Or whether I have “ever” been “exposed to chemicals”?) the doctors get annoyed and act like they didn’t want to know that. If the purpose of the form is actually to get an accurate health history, then relax it a little and make it more reflective of what you actually need to know about me. If the purpose is to cover your ass and make it my fault when I get sick or when you do something that harms me, then, well… leave it as is, I guess.

I had a somewhat similar experience to you, TWoP Fan… I had a baseline medical exam (required by OSHA) for my last employer. I disclosed that I was on antidepressants under the care of a psychiatrist and the medical monitoring program administrator called me at my desk and made me get my psychiatrist to sign off that I was “cleared to work” (this was not an issue and had never been an issue). This was not really a series of calls that I cared to be fielding in the office and it was also totally unnecessary. And as you say, the worst part is they really didn’t want to help me… I imagine they wanted to cover their ass in case I harmed myself and blamed it on work stress or something.

Obviously getting flagged by social services FOR HAVING FAT KIDS, especially WHEN YOU ARE SPECIFICALLY DEMONSTRATING YOUR LOVE AND CONCERN FOR THEM BY ASKING FOR ASSISTANCE is in a whole other, sickening league, though.

I’m sort of amazed the resources exist to put kids under 24-hour care. I wonder if there might some other children in danger who might need that? Actual child abuse victims?

Oh, that poor 11-year-old girl. She must be so tortured, weighing every bite over the prospect of losing her parents. I’m currently trying to think of a similar situation that would allow these assholes to understand what they’ve inflicted on these poor kids, but I feel dirty even thinking about subjecting people to them.

Can I just rant that I cross-posted this at Shakesville, and there are actually people in that thread arguing that this isn’t a bad idea? At least one is a known troll, but still, seriously. I fucking hate people.

I read about this yesterday, and become so enraged that I started crying. This is so wrong on so many levels. This is evil.

And the really sick part is that so many people involved in this actually think they are doing the right thing. Like, how fucking blind do you have to be? How ingrained does all this societal fatphobia have to be?

And when someone can do this or suggest this and the immediate general response from the public is not complete crying outrage, what does that signify for the state of affairs in our little world? What does that tell you about people and what they really believe, no matter how false?

It’s SO. DAMN. FRUSTRATING.

And how terrifying and traumatizing for those kids. I can’t even imagine.

I think the biggest problem with this article, the policy, and fat hysteria in general is this idea:

“Fat people are all going to drop dead at any moment”

I mean, to me, this does not seem to be occurring. They say pretty much everyone knows someone who has dealt with cancer. But how many people know people who have dropped dead of Fat, much less children?

Maybe the reason they are so hysterical is because despite the stigma applied to fat people and the supposed risks of fat, fat people are still fat, and still not dead.

I think we really need to do something about the bureaucracy epidemic. Bureaucracy Kills.

Especially the ones who are all, “but the mother is FAT so obviously she has no idea of what her kids should be eating.”

My mother is tall and my father is tall, and they did such a poor job of raising us and teaching us self-discipline that we all wound up tall as well. Obviously they have no idea how to raise healthy, average height children. Have they no shame? I know I should try to break the cycle, and I’m working really hard at it, but it’s tough, you know?

I think they should start taking children who smoke out of their parent’s home too. And kids who ride their bikes without helmets. AND kids who occasionally run out in the street to chase after their ball. Seriously. All of these things have been PROVEN to cause death. It’s not the governments fault that people don’t know how to parent their children.

i think my deepest scars, beyond name calling in the streets, or lack of romantic attention as a teenager, etc, etc, came from the pressure i experienced at home as the only fat child (oldest of four until my littlest brother came along when i was 15) to one thin parent and one ten-pound-overweight-forever-dieting parent. the watching every mouthful that i ate, the telling me ‘i’d had enough’ etc etc… that was warped my soul more than anything else. it took years to be able to forgive my parents for their misguided attempts at helping me, years to be able to get beyond the harm it caused my sense of self-worth.

i am/will be focused on my kids eating healthily as much as possible, but heck, even if they become junk food fiends i will make damn sure they know they are loved and accepted and that it is not a crime to be fat. i can’t deny i hope they’ll take after their naturally thin father instead of their naturally fatter mother because i know that life would be easier for them that way, but regardless, i decided a long time ago that mental and emotional health was more important than physical health, and that was when i still believed the general consensus was right about fat being unhealthy, and mental and emotional health come from being accepted for who you are in a safe and loving environment.

what these kids are being subjected to, what this family is being subjected to… it does not bear thinking about. taking kids away from their parents? too right they’re making that 11 year old suicidal – i can well imagine. if i thought about it any more than i am now i’d start crying.

I love the line “Apart from the name calling they will suffer…” I agree that getting made fun of by your peers is no fun for any kid, and of course any parent wants to shield their kid from that if possible. But I wasn’t particularly fat when I was a kid, and know what? I GOT MADE FUN OF ANYWAY. I was called a bookworm and a teacher’s pet, I got made fun of for sucking in gym class, whatever. But it didn’t bother me all that much (most days), because I had good friends and a loving family to go home to.

Kids make fun of just about everyone, and there’s not a lot you can do to stop it. If take the kids away from their parents and force them to loose weight, they’ll probably just get made fun of for some other asinine reason. And be less able to deal with it, since they miss their mom, dad, and siblings. Poor kids.

Okay, whaddyagonnadokate? on the Shakesville thread is really pissing me off. And I’m torn between ignoring him/her, responding with simply “fuck off”, or finding an entire slew of links to studies proving that s/he is fuckidiot.

Maybe I should do the links thing. I’m on a forum where next month is my “cause of the month” month, and I’m doing fat acceptance, and so maybe I should get started on that now.

How about we share some baby donuts and discuss boys kissing? That has to be worth some sanity points.

On that note, I was at the grocery the other day, and there was this tube of meat with a label that said “baby bologna” and a picture of a baby on it. It totally cracked me up. I was like “Like turkey bologna?”

Missa, do I have your permission to quote you on the malnourishment thing? I couldn’t put it into better words.

This is no surprise at all to me – children have been taken away from good parents without cause for a long time, and it directly relates to money oftentimes. Fishing expeditions on unsworn hearsay, 86% of which are unfounded, runaway abuse of power and authority “for the children” – I’ve been in the frontlines of that battle for many years. I raised children in a time when you had to fear them being taken away if you dared homeschool them, but we fought and now people do it a lot more frequently. This is another in a long line of battles with runaway bureaucracy that, as we’ve known for some time, is not “for the sake of the children.”

I might add, for the Hillary supporters, that Hillary tamed with Marian Edelman Wright a long time ago and Hillary wrote that the Save the Children mantra was literally a slogan in search of a cause, and Wright said children were a very effective way of obtaining power, very easy to use as such. This is really just more of the same.

I don’t even have words to describe how I feel about this craziness. It’s like they choose to live in ignorance about how wrong this is! Fat does not equal abuse, simple as that! What they’re doing to those kids will screw them up a lot more than being fat would.

You know… this reminds me of the thing I encountered yesterday. My son’s undergoing an evaluation for a little lisp, and one of the things I have to fill out is a nutritional evaluation sheet. From there, apparently, the evaluator — who is, ostensibly, only observing his lisp to get an idea of whether he needs speech therapy — will spend an entire day in my home to “monitor” his “nutritional intake.” What? Why? What does that have to do with a lisp?

One of the questions on the evaluation form was, “Do you feel your child is too fat?” Later on it asks, “Do you feel your child eats too much? If so, do you overfeed in response to your child’s appetite?”

UM WHAT. Do I feel my not-quite-three-year-old son is TOO FAT? And, if he is too fat, do I commit the heinous crime of CONTINUING TO FEED HIM WHEN HE’S HUNGRY? What the — how the — when do you — GAH! This is fucking insane! I come up against these goddamn “nutritional evaluations” CONSTANTLY, at the doctor’s office and the preschool and daycare intake interviews, and I can’t help but think JESUS CHRIST PEOPLE. If you care so much about my child’s well-being, why don’t you ask things like, “Do you ever hit your kid?” Or how about asking, “Do you feel your child is at risk for depression?” Or what about, “Do you make sure to provide your child with everything he needs?”

But no. No. It’s always about food and fat, fat and food. Apparently, overfeeding is the new black eye. I am so godfucking sick of it all. I just wish I could get him a little help with his tongue thrust without having to jump through the diet police hoops, but I guess that makes me an abusive mother.

(My kid’s not even fat, but GGGAAAAAAHHHH! Can you imagine if he was?)

I guess I should have remembered my conclusion there, which was that THIS is what would happen if my son was fat. I have no doubt that if my son was overweight and I’d checked the “overfeed” box, I’d be entertaining the lovely people from Child Protective Services right now. Sorry to forget the tie-in; I am kind of angry about this whole thing.

My best friend’s son is the poster child for What Not To Feed Your Kid. She does not cook at all. Ever. She doesn’t know how. (And I have a store of damn funny stories about her few attempts.) From the youngest age her son didn’t ask, “What’s for dinner?” he asked, “Where are we going for dinner?” He literally eats fast food every single day of his life. I doubt he eats more than a dozen servings of fruits or vegetables (which aren’t French Fries) in a year – basically only when he’s visiting his grandparents. He owns every video game system known to man, and spends most of his time indoors, playing games. His only exercise (aside from PE) is a weekly soccer game/practice, and riding his bike around the neighborhood.

Now why isn’t the state beating down her door, threatening to take her kid away unless she “learns healthy eating habits” or whatever else I’ve seen touted here? Why isn’t she being accused of child abuse? Because her kid isn’t fat. Not even a little bit. He’s built exactly like his dad – a tall, lanky beanpole. And he (and his mother) are white and upper-middle-class. (Mom has 2 Masters degrees and earns a six-figure income.)

As long as her kid is thin, she could spoon-feed him lard and remain above reproach. The double-standard is sickening.

Thanks Missa! I have to say, kate, that your warning to parents shouldn’t really be tongue-in-cheek – the scariest words in the English language are still and ever have been, “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.” Going asking for it is just asking for trouble. Government help comes with government strings and government punishments, built-in. Take the message to heart now while there’s time to fight.

There is a part of me that wants to say to the Scottish authorities: Do it. I dare you. Police everything that goes in the kids’ mouths 24/7. Then, after the kid is “of age” and no longer a ward of the state, drop in on her. When she’s 20. 30. 40. If she’s five friggin’ pounds overweight on ANY visit, Scotland pays and Scotland pays BIG.

The city I live in is the home of a state school for people with disabilities, many of whom have retardation and Down’s Syndrome. An entire population of fat, cheerful men and women cared for by the state. To this day, we hear about the EVIL people who left children with profound retardation at the state school and never came back. (I am NOT saying I agree with this.)

But if a kid is functional, healhy and !OMGFAT!, pry them away from families who love them and institutionalize them. THAT is MORAL.

“We have no hesitation in removing a severely undernourished child from their home. We should be as concerned when they are seriously overweight.”

And of course, that would have nothing to do with the fact that the severely undernourished child is in immediate peril of starving to death, or at least incurring a myriad of physical and neurological developmental delays. Meanwhile, there are plenty of children and adults whom the medical profession would deem “seriously overweight,” who are just going about their daily lives, fine as can be.

This is utterly horrifying to me. God. Just what we need. More kids removed from their loving homes. For eating! Food! GASP.

And yeah, being under 24 hour surveillance of a “fire & brimstone” team of doctors and nurses, away from your parents & your home, terrorized with the knowledge that you may NEVER get to go home again, THAT won’t cause any lasting psychological harm, of course. Then again, as long as one is THIN, who the hell cares if you have night terrors for the rest of one’s life, right?

Good God, what’s next?

Kate, I’d like to link to this post in a post of mine, if it’s all right with you.

Back in the days….when the white old men knew everything, they took Canadian First Nations children away from their parents — who were “so obviously” unsuitable, and sent them to residential schools. To be abused, sometimes sexually. Oh, yes! let’s do it again! Because it worked SO WELL before!
We’re all paying for this tragic mistake, but no one more than the children of this idiotic experiment.

I’m not surprised, because I saw this coming down the road when I first heard about children being taken away from their homes for eating.

If it’s not a real life horror film I don’t know what is. So if let’s say Freddy Kruger says “You musn’t eat one bite, or you’ll never see your parents again muwahahaha!” Unlike Freddy, I’m not very good at sarcastic quips about horrifying people. People would say oh that’s horrible, or perhaps a novel idea for a horror film ala Saw films, but still terrible.

So when a government suggests it that’s ok? I mean, we’re talking about psychologicaly getting children to fear food, and well at least they’re not going to be, OMG%$##%%$$%FAT! Starvation is considered torture people.

If I had any directing skills what-so-ever, or know how on how to put a video on YouTube. Yes, I’m completely inept about both things. I’d make a horror film themed protest against these things, and it’d be like this:

(Parent crying on the phone)

Child: What’s wrong?

Parent: They say if you don’t loose the weight, they’re going to send you someplace where they will make you loose the weight. And..I’m not exactly sure when you’ll come home

Child: (flips out hysterically crying and screaming ect)

Parent: I wish there was something I could do but they’re coming to take you away unless you loose the weight.

Some time later, like let’s say a week

Father: You have to eat!

Child: No, I’m never eating again! They’ll take me away! (Screams they’ll take me away over and over again, dramatically)

Then it would say, “What if someone said, you will be taken to a place, where you may never return from Sent to someplace where they force you to eat just enough food to keep you healthy, but never enough to make you full, because then you might get fat.

Sounds like the latest Hostel or Saw film right? It’s real. They are going to do this to children, because you are considered abusing a child, by letting them eat, even if that means they will be fat. Even the slightest amount of fat a child shows, is considered child abuse by our government.

So what do you feel is more abusive, allowing a child to grow up healthy, without having to obsess over each calorie, each peice of food. Eating healthily until they’re full.

Or sending children to a starvation camp? This is happening right now. Children are being torn away from their parents. Or they are being threatened with the idea that they will be taken away, never to return again. How would you feel if your child came to you, crying, in terror of eating? What if no matter what you would try, they would not eat. The equivelant of sewing their mouths shut. To starve to death.

This is what our government wants to do to our children, so they will not become fat and “unhealthy”. I suppose starvation is healthy now then?”